In 1979, the German children’s book writer Michael Ende decided to take a journey into imagery realms in his writing: His epic book, The Neverending Story, takes place in a magical world full of adventure that appealed not only to children. Many adults also fell in love with the powerful story. And those who were fortunate enough to experience The Neverending Story during their childhood are still fans today.

But those children have long grown up and have children of their own now. And their generation has their own author who explores universes of the imagination: Cornelia Funke. There’s hardly a child today who hasn’t read Funke’s work or has at least listened to audio books or watched film adaptations of her books.

Frances Hardinge was the subject of last weekend’s Fame and Fortune feature in the Sunday Times in which people are interviewed about their approach to money. It’s one page I always read in the Business and Money section (back page -easily found, for those who don’t normally look at this section.) It’s a sequence of stock, unvarying questions and the responses are always fascinating.
How much money do you have in your wallet?
Have you ever been hard up? etc.

Frances Hardinge describes the success of her children’s novel The Lie Tree, a tale of religion, science and murder in Victorian England that won Costa Book of the Year 2015, as a “financial bolt from the blue”. The author admits that she had hit a “low point” in her writing career only a year before: “Takings came to a little over £8,000, but after costs my earnings came to not much over £5,000.”

One of the things missed during ACHUKA’s month-long break in August was this significant interview with Alan Garner in The Observer….

When you finished Boneland, the final instalment in the trilogy that began with The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, you said it would be your last book. How did you come to write Where Shall We Run To?I can’t stop writing. It’s not something I physically enjoy, but I can’t switch off the head. There was something else, something I’d lived with all my life – the fear that I wouldn’t live to finish a given piece. Having finished Boneland at the age of 77, with no idea in front of me whatever, I thought – that’s it. And then an idea started to stir. Now, given that it takes me between five and nine years to write a novel, the joke runs a bit sour when you’re in your early 80s.

For the full interview, if you all missed it at the time:
>>>https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/04/alan-garner-interview-i-just-let-the-voice-settle-and-listened-memoir-where-shall-we-run-to

It was while reading to her own children, she says, that the idea of authorship came to her. “I got very interested in children’s books, I still am. I began to think, ‘Perhaps I could do that?’ ”So in 1970 she wrote Astercote, about a deserted village in a wood that guards an ancient secret, the first of some 30 books for children that spanned her career until 2001. Just three years later came her Carnegie Medal, for The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, a fantasy complete with poltergeist and 17th-century spook, which she still describes as her favourite among her own books.

Adam says he wasn’t given a particular reason why Waterstones picked Boy Underwater for their Children’s Book of the Month, but believes it’s the combination of the central character’s massive journey, the serious themes in the book but the humour of the delivery that have made it stand out.”It’s a really emotional story and it takes the character on a massive journey from being a normal little boy to uncovering his family secret but I think I’ve managed to make it funny as well.”If you were to say ‘what is the book about?’ it doesn’t really sound like a children’s novel – there’s quite serious themes. But I’ve tried to make the book a very safe place for children to go to those difficult issues knowing I will look after them as a narrator and writer but combined with that are the humorous element of Cymbeline’s voice.”The swimming is very important. And what he has to uncover about swimming, particularly why his mum has never taken him swimming, is the tip of the iceberg of all the secrets that his family has.”I think the central theme of the book is that if you bury secrets they will always, always, always come back to you. You can’t keep the past down and really neither should you.”

When I suggest the bow tie is good branding, he demurs. “I don’t believe in branding, I believe in hallmarking,” he says. “To me, the etymology of a brand is ownership: singeing a mark on a cow. When, say, a goldsmith hallmarks something, they are saying: ‘I made this at this particular time and it is a thing of quality and it works.’ That’s what I think we do with everything we publish.”

Finishing the Ruby Redfort series has transformed my day. It was a six-book contract, one book of 100,000 words a year. I realise now how much I missed illustrating. It’s so much more sociable. On days when I give talks at schools or events I wear a suit — if I can find one the moths haven’t eaten. Children are brilliant natural artists. They love to draw, paint, make a mess and invent, but it all gets squashed out of them in the pursuit of exams and qualifications. Ideas come when you have space to stare out of the window and let your brain wander freely.

Becoming children’s laureate has given me a voice. I’m determined to change the snobby attitude around picture books. Children’s illustration is viewed as the poor relation to fine-art painting, yet it’s children’s first introduction to art and can have a profound effect on how they view the world. John Burningham’s Granpa, which deals with the loss of a loved one, explains grief to a child far better than anything else.

Petr Horáček Q&A

The book that my parents read to me

When I was a child my father used to read to me ‘Rumcajs’ by Václav Čtvrtek, illustrated by Radek Pilař. The stories were about a shoemaker, who lived in the little Czech town of Jičín. Rumcajs fell out with the local count and went to live in the woods.

Rumcajs was strong, he wore a hat made from oak bark and he shot acorns from his ancient pistol.

The stories were fun and I liked the illustrations too.

Like many of my generation I grow up on truly amazing pop-up books designed by Vojtěch Kubašta.

Apart from books we also had lots of very good quality animated films. Here I must mention Jiří Trnka who was one of the most prolific and incredibly talented artists who worked as a puppet maker, animator, illustrator and writer.

During Communism many talented writers and artists were unable to publish and exhibit their work. Working on books and animated films for children was often the only way these artists could fulfill themselves and earn some money. Writing for children wasn’t as carefully censored, as it wasn’t considered to be important or dangerous by the ruling communistic government. The artists often wrote and illustrated under different names.

Now read the other sections in this excellent feature:

The book that first got me excited about reading

The book that I most wanted to make

The children’s book I read and re-read the most

The book I read as a teenager that blew my mind

A children’s book I discovered later in life and which had a profound effect

I’ve only just come across this feature from last weekend’s Sunday Times Magazine.

It’s a well-constructed piece by Matt Rudd about Terry Deary and his Horrible Histories colleague Martin Brown, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the series, “aimed at 8-to-12ers, that wonderful age when your children read autonomously and you can, finally, have some you-time.”

Today, when I meet him and Brown at their publisher, the irascible 72-year-old is quoting Primo Levi within five minutes. “It’s the duty of righteous men to make war against all undeserved privilege,” he says. “And that’s what we do. We make war against the undeserved privilege. I want children to understand that people in alleged power are not necessarily entitled to it. That’s why it’s odd having Horrible Histories adopted by schools. Don’t these teachers understand that we’re training kids to question authority? And they use them in schools. Bizarre. Occasionally somebody picks it up and understands, then sends me offensive emails.”

He is amused when I tell him my eldest son has become something of a flag-burning socialist since reading his books. “Don’t worry,” he says. “He’ll get balance. The schools will teach the conventional stuff. We are the counterbalance.”

Recommend reading the whole piece, if you have a means of getting past the paywall:

Despite being married for more than 50 years, [Burningham & Oxenbury] have collaborated on only one book – 2010’s There’s Going to Be a Baby. “It’s much easier if we don’t really,” said Burningham, who works on the ground floor of their home, while Oxenbury has an outside studio. They do show each other drawings that they aren’t quite happy with. “I’ll say to John, ‘What do you think of this?’ And it’ll be something that has proved to be very difficult and I’ve spent a long time over it, and all he says is, ‘Absolutely no good.’ It’s terribly depressing and you have to start again. And I do the same for him.”

“Absolutely, yes,” said Burningham. “We can take it in small doses, but if we worked in the same studio it would be dreadful.” “Feathers would fly,” said Oxenbury.